Don't you just love the co-incidence?
Verizon Plans Steps to Prevent Another Shutdown of 911 Line (via Slashdot.)
So, in the New York case the network smarts get corrupted and raw bits spill all over the central office floor to drain into the Hudson river. I hope Verizon are working hard on a solution, because that two hour outage means they're going to have to keep the network up without any failures for over 500 years to reach five-nines again.
The Manchester example probably runs like this: fire damages cable, calls are re-routed, other routes become overloaded and congested. Root cause: I can't degrade on the PSTN to a simpler service like instant messaging.
Given all the incumbent noise about how VoIP and IP communications will support access to emergency infrastructure, isn't it about time someone questioned whether circuit telephony is a suitable means of summoning help?
Posted by Martin Geddes at 3:32 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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